A Whole World of Mine Crafts

July 10, 2010 9:42 AM

Minecraft (previously discussed here) is a building game being developed by Notch. The developer (singular - it's mostly a one man show) has been busy since the last time the game was posted. Before, the focus was mainly creative, cooperative building. The recent direction the game has taken is a sprawling, single player survival game, where the player must harvest resources to build defenses against a hostile world.

The online multiplayer client is still free, and it seems that it will remain so. The survival mode, mentioned above, is going for 9.95 Euros ($12.58 American). Paying once (a 50% discount so long as it's in beta) ensures continuous future access to the full game. What can you expect? Among other things...

Minecarts
Traps
Programmable Logic operators (currently causing quite the controversy among the player base(which is a... ergh, 'mixed bag' so to speak))
And, eventually, another mode called "adventure"

Of course, for the cash strapped, and those who just want to make cool things with friends, there's always the classic mode: here.

posted by codacorolla (12 comments total)

Huh. "wirefag", eh? Learn something new every day!
posted by cucumber at 10:48 AM on July 10, 2010

"You need to purchase the game to play"

...oh. Moving on.
posted by brenton at 10:51 AM on July 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

It's also in alpha, so there's a shitton of stuff still to be put in eventually.
posted by flatluigi at 11:02 AM on July 10, 2010

Pay to be a part of alpha testing? Give me a break.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:09 AM on July 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I love a good indie game, and I see there's a free mode, and plenty of YouTube videos, so I think I see what it's like...and I guess it's not my cup of tea. The building interface seems awkward, and I guess the goals don't seem that compelling. Hmmm. I love the idea of an open development blog!

On the other hand, "getting something out there" like this is way better than just sitting on cool half-complete stuff and blogging about it, like the sometimes-brilliant-looking Subversion, which is my own private Duke Nukem Forever. I like the idea of it because procedurally generated cityscapes are very cool, even more so if they have working parts, like transit systems, elevators, etc. Plus, the technology demos are gorgeous.
posted by dylanjames at 11:29 AM on July 10, 2010

It's worth noting that after you pay once you get updates to the game for as long as it's updated. From the time that he started offering the game for sale, to the current date, he's probably doubled the content of the gameworld.
posted by codacorolla at 11:30 AM on July 10, 2010

*grumble* the last link was supposed to point to:
http://www.minecraft.net/servers.jsp

My mistake.
posted by codacorolla at 12:23 PM on July 10, 2010

You don't actually have to buy it to play it, just one of the special modes.

I've played the free version and it's actually really fun... There aren't many games where you're rewarded for building and burrowing (traditionally something that regular games avoid, because it's tough to create scenarios that can't be beaten by burrowing under something and popping out somewhere else).

I'll probably end up picking up the paid mode if they have an "almost to beta" sale, but for now, I've got a lot of other games on my plate.
posted by ®@ at 2:38 PM on July 10, 2010

From where can I download the free version of the game . I really want to try it out
posted by KPAstrology at 7:43 AM on July 12, 2010

So this is a first-person Dwarf Fortress?
posted by grobstein at 9:41 AM on July 12, 2010

Meatbomb: "Pay to be a part of alpha testing? Give me a break."

Pay to buy the game, period, with a discount for buying it early.
posted by flatluigi at 3:35 PM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]

I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but survival multiplayer was just released in a very early stage. A lot of bugs are still being worked out, but the server software is pretty steady, and I had a good time playing for the past hour or so.
posted by codacorolla at 4:31 PM on August 4, 2010